A meeting agenda is a listing of the topics you plan to address at an upcoming business meeting. If you plan your meeting agenda in advance instead of trying to "wing it," you'll avoid long, drawn-out and unproductive sessions. Write the agenda down and distribute it to your attendees in advance, or at the beginning of the meeting if necessary, to ensure that everyone is on the same page.

Determine one to three main goals that you wish to achieve as a result of this meeting. For example, "Initiate advertising campaign for the upcoming week." This will help guide you as you plan the agenda.

Decide on the meeting start time and end time as well as the location so your participants can plan accordingly.

List key developments, issues, projects, news and upcoming events concerning your company that you want to bring up in the meeting. List the key people who will be in attendance, their roles and any reports or information that you want these people to share when you gather.

Start off the meeting agenda with formalities, including an opening statement, introduction of key meeting attendees and the reading of minutes from the last meeting, if applicable.

Outline the order of information you want to present and discuss during the meeting, based on your lists in Steps 1 and 2. List each person who is responsible for presenting the topic.

Write an estimate of the time you will dedicate to each topic next to each item on the agenda, if you're concerned about meeting time constraints. For instance "Discussion of Advertising Focus, presented by Sam Smith from Marketing (20 minutes)."

Tip

Use a word-processing program to format your meeting agenda. Some word processors also offer agenda templates that you can use for this purpose (see Resources).